A discussion of the general environmental temperature is
imperative as the maternity wards are not climate controlled and
the temperatures do vary with the incumbent weather in the
region during winter, summer and rainy seasons and this is
applicable to most of the states of India. These vagaries of nature
have also been explained by Bang et al.16 and concluded that
incidence of hypothermia was higher in winter months without
home-based neonatal care in preintervention period, whereas
there was no significant difference in incidence of hypothermia
based on season in post intervention period. However, study from
Nepal with lower environmental temperature showed significantly
higher incidence of hypothermia in winter season, but they have
not mentioned about the practices followed to keep the
newborns warm.19 Thus, SSC is an intervention for term and
late-preterm newborns that can work in all seasons across India
without using additional resources in terms of electricity, which is
often unavailable.
Several studies have shown that SSC is helpful in maintaining
neutral thermal environment. Bystrova et al.20 observed the
temperature every 15 min in the axilla, on the thigh, back and foot